Hi, I'm Erin. I work in a middle school library in Maine. I love to blog about anything that has to do with children's literature, the horror genre, authors, book festivals, arts and crafts, literary theory, film adaptations of books, history, libraries, classic film, women's studies and anything else that catches my interest.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Throwback Thursday Post: That Time I Met Jason Segel

I follow alot of bookstores and authors on social media. I am addicted to going to panel discussions, book signings and conferences. I still remember last fall when I saw a post from the Harvard Bookstore that Jason Segel was going to be in Boston promoting the middle grade book he'd written.

I thought I was dreaming. I LOVE Jason Segel. I've been a fan of him since he played Nick Andopolis on Freaks and Geeks. I found the entire series on DVD years back, and it's been watched many times in our household.

And even though Undeclared was even shorter lived than Freaks, I thought his character Eric was by far the funniest part of it.

Plus, my husband, who is named Eric, bears a resemblance to Jason Segel, and their birthdays are only two days apart, so I always joked to Eric that I should be allowed to pursue Jason Segel if I ever had the opportunity because it's a compliment.

It's too bad that my opportunity to meet him was while I was pregnant.

Anyways, we drove down to Cambridge with our friend Laura with our $5 tickets in hand. The event was in a historic church, and it was packed because the tickets had sold out. The line to get in the church was down the block.

We were lucky enough to score a bench area for all of us to sit comfortably (as comfortably as possible on old wooden pews) on the left side of the church.

The audience waited anxiously, and was overjoyed when Jason emerged. He spoke a little first about what motivated him to try writing a children's book, and read the first chapter from his book Nightmares!. At the end, he allowed the audience members to come up to the microphone and ask questions. We were even treated to an impromptu musical performance, during which he sang the Dracula song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

(This is filmed by someone else, but I was in the audience!)

You haven't really lived until you've seen a Muppet-lovin 30 something celebrity bang on the ivories and sing about Dracula in a 400 year old church.

We were in luck because when it came time to line up to get our books signed, the line formed in the aisle that was right next to our pew, so we we didn't have nearly as long of a wait as some people did.

When it was my turn, I said "Hi, I'm Erin" and he said "Hi, I'm Jason." Despite the time crunch and the swarms of people, he was very nice and engaging. I told him that I was getting one of the books signed for the library because "I'm a librarian" and he replied "Oh, that's awesome."

Because of the time crunch, Jason wasn't able to take posed pictures with everyone, so we had to settle for just having our picture taken as he signed our books.The pictures aren't very flattering (we blue-eyed people look like the Terminator in flash photos, plus I was getting too pregnant to wear my skinny jeans), but it's probably the only time I'll be this close to Jason Segel.

He said he is planning to make this title into a trilogy, and I am desperately hoping that he'll give more talks about it, in any state that is remotely possible for me to travel to.